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Hargreaves walked out of his job as an
accountant after being unimpressed by
the investment advice the firm’s clients
were being given.

A subsequent meeting with a business
acquaintance changed his life and gave
him the idea that has made him worth
almost a billion pounds today.

The plan was simple: using newsletters
to give investment fund recommendations
to clients.

He said: ‘I thought this was a very
straightforward, honest way of providing
investment tips.

Hargreaves quickly roped in Lansdown
– his friend and fellow accountant who
was still working at the company he left
behind.

Together they started to produce a
newsletter of their own and advertised in
the national press.
But the duo knew they’d struck gold
when a £200 advert with a Sunday newspaper
garnered 168 sales ‘leads’.

He said: ‘It was at this point I knew we
were going to be massively successful.’

He was proved right. Hargreaves
Lansdown now has just under 400,000 customers
who rely on its recommendations,
delivering a record pre-tax profit of £72million
for the latter half of 2011.

Its status as a big hitter was underlined
when it entered the FTSE 100 of the UK’s
biggest companies last Spring.

‘We’ve never borrowed a penny,’ he said.

‘Other men have created FTSE 100 companies.
But I believe no man has done this
in his lifetime without acquisition or borrowing.
My one regret is handing over the
reigns.

It would have been nice to be chief
executive of a FTSE 100 company – even if
it was just for a day.’

It’s hard to feel too much sympathy for
Hargreaves, who stepped down as chief
executive in September 2010.

The staunch Thatherite has become
well-known for his outspoken views. This
applies to almost everything from the
environmental credentials of cars: ‘Range
Rovers are the greenest cars on the road’; the single currency: ‘the daftest
idea ever’; and holiday homes:
‘the world’s biggest waste of natural
resources’.

He is also not short of political
opinions. He hit the headlines in
the summer of 2010 for saying
that Margaret Thatcher was a
‘million times better than David
Cameron’, accusing the Coalition
of doing very little to help
businesses.

His anger has not
cooled, but most of
it is directed at the
Liberal Democrats
now. Deputy Prime Minister Nick
Clegg is described as a ‘millstone
around Cameron’s neck’ while
Business Secretary Vince Cable is
dismissed as a ‘twerp’.

‘I think Cameron has his hands
tied. We have idiots supposed to
be in government opposing its
policies and trying to introduce
crackpot ones of their own.

‘We need an honest politician in
charge who doesn’t care whether
they are re-elected and is prepared
to make the unpopular
decisions. Maggie (Thatcher) did
that in her first term.’

The unpopular decision he is
referring to is cutting spending. If
he were in charge, we are assured,
there would be no deficit.

Another bugbear is tax and red
tape. ‘We should simplify the tax
system. If I was in charge I’d
scrap every law made over the
past 12 years, including the ones
from Brussels. Regulation – that’s
what’s killing this country.’

Neither does Hargreaves hold
back when discussing company
bosses, most of whom he believes
are paid far too much.

He said: ‘People in retail banks
are not smart. They have a business
model that’s quite difficult
to not make money out of – but
still they somehow manage it.

As for the bosses of utility companies
who have a monopoly, I
wouldn’t pay them in washers.’

Having been paid a dividend of
£28.8million last year, Hargreaves can
hardly cast himself as a man of
the people but he sympathises
with public anger over pay.

He said: ‘One of the problems is,
there seems to be a salary for the
position rather than how well you
do the job.

‘Many chief executives also surround
themselves with unnecessary
things like chauffeurs and
secretaries. No one man can keep
a secretary busy.’

Tellingly, one company boss
Hargreaves does have plenty of
time for is Michael O’Leary, the
controversial and similarly outspoken
chief executive of budget
airline Ryanair.

He fondly recalls writing to
O’Leary to ask to travel to Dublin
without a passport, as it was
being renewed at the time.

‘Michael wrote back saying, “I
run a budget airline and if I start
making exceptions it won’t be a
budget airline”. He was right. I
replied saying I loved his letter.’
Hargreaves also doesn’t think
much of the Budget, which he
said ‘ranks with the Eurovision
song contest and the boat race as
the biggest non-event of the
year’.

Pensioners angry about the socalled
‘granny tax’ – achieved by
stripping the over-65s of their age
related tax-free allowance – get
short shrift.

‘The government presented that
very badly as most pensioners
will actually be better off.

‘Anyone who has reached my
age and not got any savings has
either been very stupid or very
extravagant.’

He added: ‘The problem is my
generation has robbed the future.
The deficit is huge and the pensions
of older people have to be
paid for by young people who
don’t have free education and
start life with huge debts.’

This leads us on to Hargreaves’
new project to set up a foundation
to help under-privileged students
go to university. Currently
he is working with local schools in
Bristol and is sponsoring two students.
The aim is eventually to
help hundreds of young people
get a higher education without
racking up massive debts.

He said: ‘I think these student
loans teach people that borrowing
money is good.

‘But borrowing money, whether
it be a person a government or a
business, is bad.’

It is hard to sit in a room with a
man worth almost a billion
pounds without talking about
money.

Hargreaves said: ‘Money has
always been incidental to me. If
you’re an athlete it’s who gets
across the line first. If you’re in
business the thing that keeps the
score is the wealth you generate.’

Adds Hargreaves:
‘But I’ve never been
one to buy lots of
material assets. I
have one house and one car. My
father always used to say to me
the more material things you
have the more hassle they cause
you.’

Having said all this, Hargreaves
and his wife of 25 years, Rose, do
like to enjoy the finer things in
life, such as good food, expensive
wine and first-class travel.

Hargreaves is also a passionate
gardener and talks fondly of his
garden at home.

But retirement does not appear
to be in the forefront of his mind.
Instead he is trying to work out
his new role at the firm working
alongside 40-year-old chief executive
Ian Gorham.

‘I am sort of wondering what my
role will be,’ he said.

‘But it is good to have someone
in the firm that can do most jobs
– so I am still useful.’